The team of the Volga region Academy of sports in basketball failed to overcome the quarterfinal line in the" final eight " of the VTB Student League, held in Kirov. "Academicians" conceded to Simferopol students "KFU-Griffins" (68:79).
In the match for the fifth place our team lost in a bitter struggle to Perm " Uni " (78:89). The Academy team led by the results of the first half of the game 41: 32, but failed to keep the advantage. In the match for 7th place our team failed to break the resistance of USTU (62:77).
But the season is not over. Ahead Of The Last-64 Of The League Belova. The opponent in the 1/32 finals of the "academicians" is the team of Saratov state University. According to the head coach of our team Olesya Matvienko, the challenge for the tournament at the "academicians" - out in the Last-16 League. And on March 25 the Student starts the highest League (in the Olympics universities of the RT).
However, Olesya Matvienko and performance in the VTB Student League, despite the failure in the" final eight", does not consider a failure. Recall that, having completed the regular season on the 13th line, in the playoffs, our team beat the sum of three meetings of the third team of URFU and made it to the top eight.
- The URFU team, by the way, is headed by Evgeny Kisurin, who trained the super League clubs, ex-player of the Russian national team, CSKA, Zagreb Cibona, - she says. - In General, the performance in the season was affected by the fact that compared to last year, our rivals were strengthened by the players of professional teams, and we, on the contrary, spent almost the entire championship with a team staffed exclusively by students who played basketball at the level of the youth school. Seven players of UNICS-2 are studying at the Academy, but they are not professional players, and besides, in most of the matches they could not play for us, as they were busy in the matches of UNICS-2. And our "pros" play for super League teams in other cities and are also unavailable. Yes, the guys from UNICS helped us beat URFA in the playoffs, but only one of them went to the final eight. Plus in Kirov did not play our main point guard, whose ligament rupture. Without the first issue to manage a team difficult. In the first match against "KFU-Griffins" only to the middle adjusted game, but by this time the rival already conducted +16.  In General, we did not lose in any match with a big difference, so this tournament can be considered a good preparation for the Belov League and the Student basketball League. However, in these matches will not be able to rely on Junior players "УНИКСа2". Well, this is an opportunity for our freshmen to gain experience, to improve their technical Arsenal. While they play on the system " beat-run-throw." Now in General, basketball is a problem with the technical equipment of young people, to say nothing about students who train once a day after school tired, hungry. Within one training it is impossible to tighten equipment. But I am sure they will make a step forward next season.